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Bridging the Gap Between the Page, Keywords and Copywriting

Posted on January 18, 2006 by Stoney G deGeyter

How many different ways are there to say the same thing? In some industries quite a lot. Let’s look at the SEM industry. When researching industry related keywords we found quite a few keyword themes that mean relatively the same thing to the common searcher: internet marketing, website marketing, online marketing, website promotion, search engine optimization, search engine marketing, SEO… these just to name a few.

In most cases you’ll have existing pages that focus specifically on a handful of your major themes but not necessarily all of them, though you may find the individual words already being used interchangeably throughout your site. That’s OK. Ideally want to target keywords that naturally fit on any given page. In our simple research above, however, we see that there are many cases where multiple themes actually mean the same thing. How then do you determine which keyword themes to target for any specific page?

Using our own site as an example, we found that quite a few existing pages could easily be adapted to focus specifically on any number of the themes we found. Since each one basically means the same thing to the common searcher, we found that any of them could easily be adapted to almost any page on the site simply by focusing our terminology of our services one way or another. In no way is the core message of that page changed or is our sales message diminished. It’s simply a matter of talking about online marketing as opposed to internet promotion, or search engine marketing as opposed to website marketing. When doing this, you want to make sure you remain consistent with the phrases you have chosen to target for that page.

Another aspect of assigning keywords to a page is when you find you have an abundance of keywords that fall within a single theme. One of the worst things you can do is to try and target all of them on a single page. It’s best to break them up into multiple pages, not targeting more than a few per page. For example, under our ‘internet marketing’ theme we found over 70 phrases that can be used within that topic. Same for many of the other themes. In these cases, the best thing you can do is to organize these into sub-themes and then use the same strategy as mentioned above. Find a page which any particular theme might apply best, and work your copy naturally around that.

In cases where you have more keywords to target than can fill existing pages, use your keyword themes to develop new content pages for any remaining keyword groupings. These pages will provide additional information to help sell your product or services while also allowing you to target more keywords for top search engine rankings.

When keyword themes are applied correctly throughout the site, whether to existing or newly created pages, copywriting should come naturally without feeling forced or your visitor even noticing your targeted phrases. The end result will be a robust site targeting dozens, if not hundreds of keywords, all effectively optimized, bringing in targeted traffic while increasing sales.

Stoney deGeyter is the author of The Best Damn Web Marketing Checklist, Period!. He is the founder and CEO of Pole Position Marketing, a web presence optimization firm whose pit crew has been velocitizing websites since 1998. In his free time Stoney gets involved in community services and ministries with his “bride enjoy” and his children. Read Stoney’s full bio.

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